


Musclebound

by npw57nw



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23155882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/npw57nw/pseuds/npw57nw
Summary: Severus reminisces and wrestles with his demons in a muggle gym. This story takes place in Cokeworth at the end of the Hogwarts summer holidays in 1990. Severus is 30 years old.This story contains foul language, drug references and adult themes. This is a revised version of the story first published on Fanfiction.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	1. Musclebound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laventadorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laventadorn/gifts).



Severus completed a second set on the chest press. Merlin, this place stank of sweat. Sweat and liniment. The walls were permeated with the stuff. The gym had seen better days but it suited Severus' purposes. He'd started coming here a few years ago during the summer holidays while he was resident at Spinners End. Keeping fit for the traumas to come if Dumbledore was right about the Dark Lord returning. But really he'd been bored and wanted something to occupy himself and pass the time through the long vacation. Keep him from dwelling on the past and the inevitable descent into the bottle that would follow. He must have walked past the entrance a hundred times without giving it a thought. Then one grey, cool, damp northern summer's day, at a loose end, he stepped inside.

And here he was in a faded black tee-shirt and sweat pants pumping iron. Severus chuckled to himself at the image that conjured inside his head. Pumping iron, ha! Whatever would Minerva and his other colleagues think if they could see him working out in a muggle gym. Never mind Lucius and his Death Eater acquaintances. Mind you, Poppy would probably approve. Once she worked out what he was doing that is. Severus smirked at that thought.

Billy who ran the gym gave him a nod as he wandered past. He was a broken-nosed ex-pug. One of those guys with no neck. Reminded him of Goyle senior. He ran a boxing club for the local youths and the gym included a ring. He had tried to get Severus to spar a few times but so far he'd always refused. Maybe he'd give it a go.

The club was meant to keep the local kids out of trouble and it received financial support from the local council for this endeavour. Kids like some of those Severus used to know. Severus had by no means been the only deprived, neglected child in Cokeworth, or indeed Spinners End. There were a few of them that Severus had gravitated towards in muggle primary school before he went to Hogwarts. He'd also kept up with them in the holidays away from Hogwarts until he finished there and his decisions took him away from Cokeworth for good.

Davy had been the lad he was closest to. A little runt of a skinhead with shiny red DMs when he first met him. He'd been so proud of those DMs. Davy who'd introduced him at a tender age to fags and wank mags. Lily thought he was a ‘wrong un’ although she never used that phrase. Mind you she thought all the other lads he got on with were ‘wrong uns’ as well. No change there then he thought bitterly. There again she was probably right. Davy called Lily a "stuck up cow". He was probably right too.

As they got older booze and pills followed the fags and mags as Davy's choice of entertainment. Unlike the fags and booze, the pills never really worked for Severus. Something to do with wizard bio-chemistry. Davy also introduced him to muggle music, first glam in his early years at Hogwarts, and then more notably, the punk and new wave bands that flowered in the years after he lost Lily. You could just make out the words Joy Division above a wavy grid on his black tee-shirt, a gift from Davy years ago. Poor Davy, long gone. Choked on his own vomit when he miscalculated his intake of pills and a half bottle of White Horse. That had hurt. Not the soul aching agony of Lily’s passing, but it hurt hard all the same. Like a little bit more of him had been broken off and lost.

“You owe me Sev, you owe me”. I can still hear his voice. He had a deep bruise on his jaw and a cut on his cheek along with a black eye. He’d rolled up his shirt and shown me more bruises on his ribs and stomach. Some of them actually shaped like boot prints. Much against my better judgement he’d persuaded me to go with him to see City play Leeds. It was during the Easter break the year after Lily stopped talking to me. I’d told him that my long hair might be a problem with his skinhead mates. “No Sev, you’ll be alright with me, I’ll look after you”. I admit I was curious as I’d never been to a match before. Turns out I wasn’t the problem.

The game was something else. You couldn’t hear yourself think. The chanting and singing along with the roar of anticipation or appreciation bounced off the stand roof and filled all the space around reverberating through your body. Packed in, unable to move you fell forwards down the terrace with the crowd’s movement and then it pulled you back. I was shitting myself until I realised I couldn’t fall. Someone would grab you and pull you up. You became part of the crowd. Invincible. Shouting, chanting and hollering. It was as good as the feel of magic. I hid that memory buried hundreds of layers deep in my mind in the years to come.

After the game we were making our way to where we’d catch a bus through the back to back terraced streets around the ground when he was hailed by a bunch of skins I didn’t recognise. “Run” was all Davy said before taking off. We legged it through the back streets. I didn’t even know where I was going. I was beginning to tire when he shouted at me to split up. He went down one street and I another. Our pursuers followed him. They kicked seven shades of shit out of him the poor sod. He’d crossed them over something. He never told me what.

Anyway in Davy’s mind his sacrifice meant that I owed him. He wanted me to go to Amsterdam with him in the summer. In the end I gave in and said yes. There was no way my old man would have applied for a passport for me so I had to borrow Davy’s to make a duplicate with the _gemino_ spell. Some nifty transfiguration work, that I have to say was rather good, added my photograph and details. I did this back at Hogwarts in the summer term. Davy was well impressed thinking I had the criminal connections to get fake passports made.

Amsterdam was fun. We hitch hiked down the M6 and then cross country to Harwich. There we took the ferry to Hook. I returned home a few weeks later without my virginity which was good, but also with some minor brain damage. Not so good. Needless to say my parents hadn’t missed me. We’d just hung out with boys and girls we met, slept in squats and smoked and drank our days away. We had enough money from Davy’s thieving and a summer job I’d had for a couple of weeks before we went to get by.

One night we’d gone to a place near Vondel Park to buy some hash. The guy suggested that we try some sort of mushroom he had. Don’t know what it was. It was large enough for him to carve a slice off it with a bread knife. I asked him how much to take to which he just shrugged. We divided it between ourselves. The stupidity of youth.

I must have lost two days. No idea what we did. I can remember being surrounded by black and white bats whirling around my head while I clung to a bed that was heaving up and down. When I finally came down I couldn’t speak. I could see the words in my head but when I tried to say them nothing came out. It was like I’d forgotten how to talk. I thought that I’d really fucked up, that I’d fucked my head. Davy of course thought it was hilarious. Much to my relief speech came back to me over the next few hours. We didn’t stay long after that. I was itching to get home to my wand to see if I could still do magic because the lingering effects of the mushroom was preying on my mind.

Fortunately there didn’t appear to be any impact on my magic although worryingly I did suffer flashbacks for several months even after I’d returned to Hogwarts. Looking back now maybe it would have been better if I’d been permanently damaged. Never returned to Hogwarts. Never joined the Dark Lord. Never heard that prophecy. Spent my life in and out of muggle hospitals and mental asylums undergoing therapy. I think I would have exchanged that for the price I paid; for the price she paid.

The last time Lily ever spoke to me was during a flashback. It was after one of Slughorn’s classes. I’d dawdled cleaning up my potions station and had just left the classroom when the floor went from under me. At first I thought that Potter or Black had hexed me but as a portrait melted down the wall I realised I was having a flashback. I was clinging to the wall trying to occlude hoping to shove it all behind my mental barriers when Lily came out of the classroom. She’d been asking Slughorn something after the lesson finished.

Normally she’d have blanked me and just walked past without even a glance but she must have noticed I was in some distress. “Snape” she said sharply “is something wrong?" I was losing my battle with the hallucinations as my attempt at occlusion disintegrated. I could feel I was sweating and I guess I’d probably gone a shade paler than my normal corpse like pallor. I’d learnt from previous experience when this happened one just had to wait it out, preferably a little less publicly than now. As I slid down the wall and dropped my head into my hands the only response I managed was a single "fuck".

Lily was starting to fuss now, a note of panic entering her voice. “I’ll go and get Madame Pomfrey”. I managed a “No don’t”. “Severus don’t be silly, you’re not well”. That was the first time she had used my given name since our row. In the dark watches of the night when I couldn’t sleep, how I’d longed for that. I didn’t want Pomfrey looking through my head in my current state. “Just let me be, I’ll be alright”. She huffed and with a “suit yourself Snape” she was gone. Behind the privacy of my wards and bed curtains I wept that night. I only ever cried once more four years later on All Hallows’ Eve.

Like Davy, the other boys were mostly gone now as well. Some had even managed to escape Cokeworth. Some had been in and out of prison. One stabbed to death over a dispute in a chip shop. Stabbed in a chip shop. You couldn't make it up. Merlin, Cokeworth was a fucking khazi. It really was fucking Chickentown. To think he had spent so many afternoons talking to Lily about how they were both going to get out of Cokeworth. She had he supposed. But not in the way they'd wanted. Not then. And he was still here.

He had Hogwarts he thought morosely. That promised world of magic and wonder that he and Lily so much looked forward to as children. But for him in the end it turned out to be just a khazi of another kind. A khazi he was now trapped in. Unsettled by his gloomy turn of thoughts Severus decided to finish his session. He needed a ciggie. He turned off the old Walkman he had listened to in the gym and pocketed it. Another long ago gift from Davy that had no doubt been stolen. Glad to get outside he headed towards the park where he'd first met Lily. If there were no kids about he'd go and sit on the swings and smoke.

Albus hated his smoking habit. More reason to pursue it. Mind you Albus was a sly one. He’d keep bringing into the conversation that Sirius Black had liked a fag. Thought he’d cure me of the habit by associating it with that arsehole, or more likely he just wanted to needle me. Black had smoked because it’s muggle connection pissed off his stuck up pure blood family. I’d had my first fag with Davy down by the river when I was nine. He’d probably nicked them from his dad and he probably took a hiding for it later.

We’d also competed in trying to hit a can floating in the river with our pee. Can’t imagine Potter and Black ever doing that. Sucking each other’s cocks maybe. How Lily never twigged is beyond me. Her gaydar was clearly not working. Severus briefly entertained himself with a fancy about Lily coming upon her husband with Black buried deep in his arse imagining the look of horror on her face. But the thought quickly faltered and broke. He had never been able to hate Lily for more than a few moments. Not much longer than it took to play the Buzzcocks’ _Oh Shit_ through twice.

He needed to think about what really was nagging at the edge of his calm. The Potter spawn who was going to arrive at Hogwarts in a years time. Lily's boy. Jesus, some higher being, whether muggle or magical, wasn't happy unless he was pissing on Severus Snape. He sighed and lit up taking a deep inhalation and releasing the smoke through his nose, letting the nicotine rush fill his head. Gently pushing the swing back and forth he let his feet drag along the ground. He flicked the Walkman on, his eyes unfocusing as he stared out across the park. _"Every day's like Sunday. Every day's silent and_ _grey_ _"_. Every day is silent and so, so, so fucking grey. When he finished the fag he’d go down the Spinners Arms and see if he could score some dope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The slang and references used in this story are accurate to the time as far as I remember. I’ve assumed Cokeworth is either part of, or close to the Greater Manchester conurbation.  
> DMs refer to Doc Martins the footwear of choice for the skinhead fraternity in the UK in the 1960’s and 70’s. They were also known as cherry reds where I come from in North East England and the average skin prided himself on his boots and some were polished so fine they shone like mirrors. The real hard boys spray painted their’s silver or gold.  
> Fags as many of our US friends find amusing has long referred to cigarettes in the UK. White Horse was and still is a UK brand of blended whiskey.  
> Manchester City played Leeds United in the First Division of the Football League on 8/4/76 (UK notation) at Maine Road winning 2:1. If you attended association football games and stood in the ends at the big club grounds before Heysel and the Bradford City fire and compulsory seating you will understand Severus’ experience and feelings about being part of a football crowd.  
> A chip shop refers to the fish and chip shop the staple British takeaway before the influx of the Chinese, Indian, Pizza, and other myriad foreign food outlets you find today.  
> A Khazi is slang for a toilet or more rudely a shithouse, probably British Army in origin.  
> I did wonder whether Severus would have used the expression ‘gaydar’. But a little research says that it was first referenced by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) in 1982 so I think it fair game.  
> Chickentown is a reference to the poem 'Evidently Chickentown' by John Cooper Clarke probably written about Manchester that is a fair description of many Northern cities in the 1970’s.  
> ‘Oh Shit’ was the B side of the Buzzcocks’ single ‘What do I get’ released early 1978. It’s a three minute love song about the end of a teenage romance.  
> The lyrics quoted in the last paragraph come from the 1988 song written by Morrisey after he’d left the Smiths ‘Everyday is like Sunday’. It’s likely difficult for anyone born after 1970 to understand the sentiments expressed in this song but it perfectly captures what Sundays were like for anyone over the age of 12 growing up in the sixties and seventies UK.  
> The Spinners Arms was (or maybe still is) a pub in Hulme, South Manchester notorious for drugs in the 1970’s. Nico of Velvet Underground fame was searched by the police one time there. Serendiptiously it fits with JKR’s Spinners End .


	2. Remember a day before today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another endlessly dull summer and Severus finds himself in the park again

I was in the park again. When I was bored with nothing to brew or research and my dusty magical books held no appeal and I couldn’t bear to sit in the empty house in Spinners End any more I tended to come here. Wandering around until I ended up at the children's playground. There was more equipment here than when me and Lily were kids. All we had was a couple of swings. And here I was sitting on the very same swings smoking and thinking about walking over to the street that Lily had lived on. It was over on the north side through the entrance on Park Avenue. The posh side. Park Avenue that ran along the side of the park was tree lined grand Victorian villas albeit gently decaying many now broken up into multi-occupancy flats. Lily lived on one of the roads off the Avenue. Not as grand but posh all the same.

Someone else lived in their house now. Lily's parents were long gone, but I'd still walk up their road like I used to over twenty years before. When I reached the house I'd stop and try to imagine Lily there my heart creeping up into my throat. I'd remember playing in the garden. Watching the telly with her in the front room, Petunia scowling somewhere in the background. They had a colour telly while we had a clapped out old black and white one from Radio Rentals. Her mum bringing us ribena in plastic beakers and chocolate digestives on a willow pattern plate. It had a pagoda and the two doves on it. I loved that plate. We had nothing like it it my house. 

Then I'd push my magic out and try to feel a memory of her, an echo of her magic left in time. There was never anything, only my own emptiness. I’d fix a memory of her in my mind. The sun shining through her hair as she swung on the garden gate her face lighting up as she saw me coming up the road and try again. I’d linger as long as I dared before the locals began to wonder what I was up to and called the law. Then I’d walk back down the road the way I’d come towards the park with an ache in my chest like something was trying to get out and wonder what the fuck was I doing.

I’d walk on through the park to the east entrance and out through the streets of back to back terraces that side towards Spinners End. Past the Beehive. My old man used to drink there. There would be people in there who remembered him, and me. Maybe those who might want to get a bit of retribution in. He’d been the local terror. Everyone in the streets round Spinners End knew him. Lily had never understood that. She just thought he was a bully who knocked me about. The idea of getting a hiding from your dad was completely foreign to her. I didn’t get any more hidings than any other kid that side of the park and what’s more, he conferred protection on me. No one who knew him round our way would bother me. He might not have minded giving me the back of his hand but he didn’t like anyone else doing it. I was never bullied until I went to Hogwarts. 

I noticed someone was walking over towards the swings. A woman with a kid. I was about to clear off as they got closer when the woman waved and called out. "Hi Sev. I thought it was you. What are you doing here? I haven't seen you around for a while." It was Pol, one of Davy's cast offs. The kid with her was probably his. She'd been in the year below us at the same primary school that Lily, Davy and I had been to. I hadn’t seen her since Davy’s funeral. She’d been all in Goth black then, widow’s weeds if I’d ever seen them, but not today. Skinny blue jeans, monkey boots and a black jacket. She had the collar turned up and sported a bright pink industrial cut.

She’d followed Davy’s fashion changes religiously although Davy had never made new romantic or goth. He got stuck at punk. Davy’s transformations could put Lupin to shame. Suedehead followed skinhead. At one point he even had a white boiler suit and bowler hat but that drew far too much attention from the coppers and didn’t last. Next came glam boy. Six button high waist Oxford bags, stack heels and a skinny jumper on top of a ghastly patterned shirt. Jesus what was he thinking. Punk came as a relief to me at least.

She walked over and sat down on the swing next to me while her little girl ran over to an elaborate climbing frame and slide. I nodded to her "you look well Pol" which she did. I offered her a fag and she took one. Lighting up she looked me over and said "you look like shit". Thanks Pol. "Nice to know" I muttered and she laughed punching me lightly on the arm. 

We just sat there smoking for a minute or two watching Pol's daughter play on the slide. She looked at me sideways before breaking the silence. "People will get the wrong idea about you hanging around the swings.” I just grunted in reply. “So what have you been up to? Davy said that you were a teacher in some posh school in Scotland. The same one you went to." That’s the story I had always spun Davy. “Can’t see you teaching a bunch of toffs.” That was the problem, neither could I, and until I learnt how to go full “I am an arsehole” on them, neither could they. “Yeah still doing that. It’s the summer holidays so I’m down here. What are you up to?” I was hoping to deflect her from more questions about Hogwarts. She looked across the park taking a drag before replying “working at Woolies“. I looked pointedly at her pink hair and with a grimace she added “they make me wear a wig when I’m at work”. I had to laugh. 

We talked a while about Cokeworth and old acquaintances until Pol said “look I’m dropping Emma off at her nan’s. Do you want to come along and come back to my place. I’ve got some smoke”. Well I didn’t have anything else to do and unless I was very much mistaken I was being given the glad eye. I wasn’t going to turn down a chance to get my leg over so after a minute or two of Pol persuading Emma that her nan’s was a better choice than the swings we headed off with Emma giving me suspicious glances on the way. While I no longer had the shabby air of my youth I probably didn’t look like the type of person you took along to meet your grandma. After all, as Pol had so concisely put it, I looked like shit.

As I expected nan turned out to be Davy’s mum. She still lived where they had lived when I was a kid the next street over from Spinners End. While Emma was giving her nan a hug Pol announced my presence with “look who I found in the park”. Davy’s mum smiled and welcomed me when she saw me much to Emma’s disbelief. She, like Lily’s mum, had always been kind to me as a child. I seemed to attract kindness from other people’s mums. Just not my own. “Severus it’s good to see you” she said looking me over. She had the grace not to echo Pol’s earlier thoughts on how I looked and she didn’t offer me a hug as she knew me too well. A cup of tea the colour of treacle served with condensed milk was on offer though and I sat with Pol and her mother-in-law in the kitchen drinking too sweet tea and talking about this and that studiously avoiding the past. 

Joe, Davy’s dad looked in after a while. I hadn’t seen him since the funeral. He’d shaken my hand then and thanked me for coming. I didn’t stay for the wake making my excuses. I needed to get away and grieve on my own. Joe had understood that. The quickest way out of Manchester the old joke said was a bottle of whiskey, a road I knew well, and one I intended to travel that day in the privacy of my rooms at Hogwarts. Joe had been a shop steward at the mill where my old man worked. I’d known him since me and Davy had been kids. He seemed shrunken now from how I remembered him. The light had gone out in him. I knew all about that. 

We made our excuses shortly after and made our way over to the council estate that Pol lived on. She had a two bedroom flat on the second floor of a low rise block called Heron House. It was known locally as the Bird Estate although it’s official name remembered some local worthy. Built at the end of the sixties after slum clearance it was a pre-fab concrete homage to Bauhaus. It probably looked really good on the council architect’s drawings where the lines were clean, the sun always shone and the lawns were green. Trouble was the grey concrete under the grey skies and grey rain surrounded by grey grass covered in dog shit and litter didn’t quite look the same. 

Pol made good on her promise of smoke and more. Now some observing her choice of partner to take home would say this was a charity fuck but I knew better. Pol wanted to talk about Davy and this was her admission ticket. It wasn’t a straight transaction. Pol was cunning enough to know that wouldn’t work. She did know that with some smoke inside me and maybe a little drink in a post-coital haze I’d be more agreeable. My shields, like my kecks, would be down literally. So I indulged her and talked about Davy. She liked the stories I had and never tired of hearing them. I’d always wished I had someone I could talk to about Lily and I couldn’t refuse Pol her longing for memories. I knew only too well that desperate aching need.

Of course Pol too had a lot of stories about Davy and many from when I was away at Hogwarts during my schooling which I hadn’t heard. So I lay there on the bed looking at a spider making it’s web on the light fitting on the ceiling while Pol nattered on about Davy. I found myself wondering whether I could have turned my back on the magical world. Pol would have had me. I would have been welcomed into the warmth of Davy’s family. I could have made a life here, maybe even been if not happy, content. In the end no matter my delusions about the magical world this was the only place I’d ever belonged. It was me who’d never wanted to belong here.

With no muggle qualifications it might have been difficult finding work but I probably could have made a living in petty crime and dealing with the judicious use of confundus and notice me not charms. If that drew too much attention from the DMLE and I wanted a more honest occupation, then maybe I could have trained as a chemistry teacher. I didn’t allow wizarding prejudice to restrict my potions research and spell making and was more than well versed in muggle science and could easily fake the qualifications I needed. 

Mind you I’d always been very careful to hide any muggle science journals and books I possessed guarded by glamours, hexes, and notice me not charms. It wasn’t the Dark Lord I was concerned about but rather the more rabid of his followers who saw the possession of any muggle artifact as evidence of treason. He, if anything, just displayed indifference to such things. I did suspect based on some of the references he occasionally let drop that he may at one time have studied mundane science extensively. 

He did catch me out once. I was staying at the Malfoy’s in the spring of the year he murdered Lily. I’d already given myself to Dumbledore and had every reason to be paranoid. Lucius had said nothing and I was not expecting his appearance there. I was in one of the day rooms reading, a solitary pleasure I indulged in occasionally when staying there. God knows why but it was a copy of Grendel. Probably not the best of choices. The room was pale green and looked out over the gardens. I’d always liked that room. It was something I aspired to then, an airy room with fine furniture looking out over a garden you couldn’t see the end of. A place you could sit undisturbed and read for pleasure. Those aspirations like most things in my life have long since turned to ashes.

“I see you are interested in monster hunting Severus.” Even with all my occlumency practice I failed to stop starting at the sudden announcement of his presence behind me as he entered the room. With a silent accio the book whisked away from my hands into his. He turned his back on me drifting over to the windows that looked out over those perfect lawns and started leafing through it. He wore night black robes that were chased with silver around the collar. He was a tall man and people who knew him had told me he had been handsome and charismatic when he was young. Now late middle age and damage from dark magic had dulled his appeal. His hair was thin and shot through with grey. His eyes were so bloodshot they were almost red and there was a tell-tale dark webbing of veins around them. He also sported long finger nails finely manicured into talons that really didn’t do him any favours.

“But which monster do we hunt?” He’d been silent for a few long minutes seemingly engrossed in the book, a pause I had used to calm and order my mind and this time I didn’t jump. “Well Severus?” He turned around towards me and I felt a prickle like pins and needles brush across my skin from head to toe like a caress. Not many wizards or witches knew you could do that with the cruciatus and even fewer could do it. In fact those who knew were likely to have met the Dark Lord in person. All my internal alarms were screaming and I didn’t really know how to answer his question. I didn’t know what he wanted to hear. 

Was he suggesting that he was the monster? Was he alluding to my treachery? “It’s not about hunting monsters my Lord”, I said stalling. He continued to stare at me silently. “Its about the monster trying to understand the world outside of him”. I was blathering. “Is there any purpose to it, or does it even exist?” Christ I sounded like one of those blokes with the long hair and luxurious sideburns on the BBC2 Open University in the seventies discussing phenomenology. He was going to gut me.

He stepped towards me and ran a forefinger down my cheek, digging his talon in ever so slightly, while I fought with every sinew I had not to flinch back from him. “Well then Severus my advice to you is to seek out gold and sit on it.” Fuck! It was the dragon’s repudiation of Grendel’s argument. Had he read the fucking book? Tilting his head to one side and looking directly into my eyes he murmured “So full of self loathing my young friend”. He drew away from me and put his hands together as if in prayer running one thumb nail against his lower lip. “Such loathing leads to doubt and there can be no room for doubt Severus” he whispered. His blood red eyes bore into mine for a moment and then he was gone. 

I stood stock still for a number of minutes, in that room I suddenly no longer found so appealing, trying to process the conversation we’d just had without even realising the book was back in my hands. He hadn’t attempted legilimency. He can’t have uncovered my treachery or even suspected me because I’d have been dead. In the end I decided that he’d just seen an opportunity to indulge in a bit of inducing terror for the sake of it. Because he could the fucking tosser. A lesson I learned well and applied vigorously during my time as a professor at Hogwarts. 

I was brought back to earth by Pol pinching my nipple hard. “You’re not listening to me are you” she huffed. What could I say I’d wandered off in my head. Indulged in a pipe dream that triggered a less than pleasant memory. A pipe dream the Mark would always make impossible. Without it maybe, and that would have been a big maybe, I would have been left alone and not bothered by the war going on in the wizarding world. But probably not. As a Slytherin who had not chosen sides and gone to ground I would have been pursued by Albus trying to recruit me. He wouldn’t have felt any need to honour my choice to be left alone. The bastard would no doubt have even tried to use Lily to get to me. And knowing her she would have gone along with it. After all what was one more betrayal. With the Mark I would have been sought out and killed by my erstwhile comrades for desertion and consorting with the enemy. Worse I would put Pol and Davy’s family in mortal danger. A betrayal I had made once and one I swore that I’d never repeat.

Then she surprised me by asking “whatever happened to that red head that you were sweet on? She lived over North Side didn’t she”. I hadn’t known that Pol had ever noticed. “Didn’t she go to that school with you?” Davy could have spoken about it I suppose. He’d always thought me a fool over Lily and wasn’t shy about saying so. “Sev she’s too good for you. I don’t mean she is cos she isn’t. She’s just a stuck up cow from North Side. But that’s just the way it works. You’re not stupid. You should know that.” Quite the philosopher was Davy. He was right though. That was just the way it fucking worked.

I debated in my head how to reply to the question and finally settled on “Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Hull with Davy”?


End file.
